List Building & Lead Generation for Affiliates

PRESENTATION POWER

In order to achieve
any level of success,
affiliates must
understand that their
role in the performance
marketing space is
that of list builder and
lead generator. Those
that master these
processes for the
merchants they
ultimately work for
are in a better position
to earn some nice
payouts, but those
mastering the
processes for their
own Web enterprises
are the ones who
will generate the
most revenue over
the long term.

List building and lead generation have been discussed
in the pages of previous issues of Website
Magazine, but rarely has the conversation focused
on a single method that can be used to achieve
both of these ends. Fortunately, a method does
exist. It’s time to ramp up our affiliate marketing
with the power of presentations.

With social media’s surge in popularity, and
with search marketing (both paid and organic)
firmly established as means to drive users to a
website, it’s not uncommon for affiliates to look
past more traditional forms of gaining attention
— and new business — on the Web. Presentations
provide such a way and are something the performance
marketing community should spend
more time developing.

There are few more effective ways to establish
credibility, showcase creativity and build community
than through presentations. Blog posts get lost
in the virtual sea of content and infographics can
be cumbersome to create, but all that a presentation
requires is interesting content (facts or opinions
will suffice) and some software that you likely
already have on your computer. A few suggested
resources include Microsoft’s PowerPoint, Google
Docs Presentation capabilities or Zoho Show.

When it comes to what should be included,
the sky is really the limit. One way might be to
transform a “list of ten” into a presentation. For
example, say that you produce an article about ten
ways to increase time on site. Transforming that
content into a presentation is rather simple. What
it requires are strong headlines and well defined
synopses of the key takeaways.

For example, if you suggest that one way to
increase time is to encourage users to complete
a survey, the headline might be “Incorporate
Surveys and Solicit Responses” with the synopsis
being something along the lines of “Research
shows that users stay 34 percent longer on a
website that includes surveys.” Adding some
additional value might come in the form of resources
(in the case of the presentation outlined
here, that might come in the form of Web-based
survey tools).

Once you have content for a presentation and
a reliable tool for production and development,
spend some time crafting that content for the presentation
format specifically. Presentations often
vary in size, scope and detail, but restricting the
number of slides to 10 or 15 with no more than 30
seconds of reading material on each will bring the
timed user experience to around three minutes on
the low end. That’s just enough to keep a user engaged
without risking their departure.

Perhaps most important in developing presentations
for building a list and generating leads
is making the pitch. The means by which you do
this in a presentation, much like within a formal
speech, is through what I and others refer to as
“signposts.” As the name implies, signposts indicate
to users that something important is happening
or that the portion of the presentation they are
viewing needs attention paid to it. Since our aim
is to build our list and generate leads, the signpost
for the example presentation might be to sign up
for a newsletter or explore additional resources
(on the website) to learn more about the subject.

Finally, you’ll need somewhere to upload
the presentations you create and there are many
excellent destinations to explore including
Slideshare.net, Slidebook.com, AuthorStream.com,
Slide.com and MyPlick.com. It’s not uncommon to
see presentations on these destinations routinely
reach into the thousands of views.

While many won’t be invited to share their insights
and wisdom in the hallowed halls of industry
conferences, every website owner — regardless
of the industry they work within — does have
such an opportunity.